Last Chance To Lose Control
by isthisjustphantasy
Summary: Apocalypse!phan - They came in the dead of night. Crawling up from the sewers and down the walls into the gutters. Dan and Phil are caught up in the middle of it all and must decide whether to stay and fight or flee for their lives, and it is only in the face of death that they realise who it is they can't live without. Is love enough to save a life?


_You won't get much closer  
Until you sacrifice it all._

They came in the dead of night. Crawling up from the sewers and down the walls into the gutters, contorted, rabid, twisted and rasping as they breathed. Some said zombies. Others said aliens, while the holy stood on street corners screaming to the heavens for forgiveness. They were too humanoid, too terrestrial and unnervingly familiar to be discarded as creatures from another world; but they were very much alive. A sickness, perhaps, a plague of the mind and soul.

The first had been captured. Detained safely, not a public threat, a point of scientific interest at most. Not to be feared, certainly, because they were locked up and carefully monitored. Quarantined. Genetics testing was to be carried out to identify if their origin was indeed human, after which a bubble of excitement surrounded the possible research developments these beings could provide. On the third day of experimentation, the doors shut suddenly and all power was cut off from the building. Within a week, the streets of London were crawling with Them.

They travelled in packs, whether for companionship or accidental correlation no one could be quite sure. They stuck to the shadows and moved at night. In the early days, most called them zombies. It was easier to refer to them this way; the undead seemed a familiar and comforting concept in the face of these creatures. But these were not zombies.

* * *

x

* * *

Muse was blaring through Dan's headphones and he whistled quietly, swinging a pair of plastic carrier bags on his arms. He wondered vaguely how many helicopters it would take to lift an elephant and he had to do a quick hop-skip to avoid walking into a pole. He turned a corner onto the short, grey walled street that would take him home. Above his head, a pigeon cooed dolefully. It was spectating a mildly dramatic standoff between a seagull and a crow as they fought for possession of half a packet of salt and vinegar crisps on the rooftop. Without warning the birds shot into the air with a beating of wings.

The sound of smashing eggs echoed down the street as the carrier bags slipped from his hands and onto the concrete paving slab. _It_ had leapt from a ledge to land in front of him, spitting and hissing. Its lips were blue and its skin pale and bloodshot as if out in the cold for far too long. Dan backed slowly up against the wall, his heart in his mouth. Its teeth were pointed - jagged and uneven, as if chipped away into sharp points with a rock or a knife. It was the eyes however that held Dan's gaze. Yellow. Piercing, almost fluorescent at the centre and fading away to cream at the edges. There was no white, and no pupil either – just a central sphere of burning amber.

In all other aspects, it was human.

They stared at one another, frozen and bristling, mirroring each other's stances. Cautiously, Dan spoke.

"Hello?"

It hissed violently and Dan jumped backwards, grazing his elbow on the brickwork. His sudden movement startled It and it too jolted, tumbling off the bin it was crouched atop and landing in a heap on the pavement. It scrabbled to right itself, tripping over its own limbs before finally pulling itself to its feet and sprinting away down the street.

Dan slowly let out a breath, his heart still clammering and thudding in his ears, then and he turned on his heel and ran.

* * *

x

* * *

"Phil?" He yelled, bursting through the door of their flat and gasping for breath.

"Dan? You okay?" Phil poked his head round the living room door, concerned.

"Yeah, fine. Phil, I may possibly be overreacting, but I think we need to pack some bags and get the hell out of here."

"What are you talking about?" Phil said, alarmed.

"You know those creepy zombie things they showed on the news? Well I just saw one literally right outside our door. Either there are more of them, or they got out. Didn't you say there were reports of weird things happening over at the laboratory? Like, someone had tried to go in but the doors were locked and no one was answering the phones?"

Phil scratched his head. "Well, yeah, but Dan be sensible here. You saw one. Did it look dangerous? Calm down. This isn't a zombie apocalypse, okay? It's like a mutant rat escaped from a lab or something. They're probably more scared of us than we are of them."

"They're not rats, Phil, they're human." But Dan remembered the way the creature had fled and eventually he agreed, uneasily, to wait.

* * *

x

* * *

They watched the report together on the sofa, clutching at each other as a newsreader with a pallid complexion and a voice that wobbled slightly as he spoke issued a state of emergency across half of London. Stay inside, stay away from Them, and do not panic. At the end of the report it cut to a helicopter report to a shot of one of the main A roads leading out of London. Thousands of cars stood motionless on the road, lined up in their neat lanes – a cruel contrast with the scene that sweeping shot unveiled. Three lorries had jack-knifed on a bridge, blocking the road completely, but before the emergency services had been able to get through panicked citizens fleeing the city had tried to shift the wreckage themselves, while those waiting in the cars had pushed to get through before enough space was cleared and only added to the build-up. Rescue vehicles with flashing lights had been unable to get past where cars had slipped out of their lanes in an attempt to push ahead, and now they too were adding to the blockage. Three helicopters were working with firefighters to carry chunks of metal away from the bridge, but it had been too slow and already hundreds had abandoned their cars – continuing on foot until those behind them realised they would never get through and followed suit. As they watched, the helicopters gave up clearing the bridge and shot off to another motorway where the traffic had become so heavy that cars were shunting each other out of the way.

Dan reached for his laptop, but it didn't take long to discover that all trains and buses out of the city had been booked up completely for the next three weeks. Slowly, he turned to Phil.

"What do we do?" he asked. "Do we just stay here and hope it all gets sorted? Or do we try to get out? Risk it on foot?"

Phil bit his lip. His laptop was whirring angrily on his lap as he searched. "Okay so it's definitely some sort of disease and it's contagious. They seem compelled towards humans but the science people aren't sure why yet, or how exactly it's spread across because they don't seem to be feeding on the humans. They're eating out of bins, normal food mostly. There's a report of them breaking into a school cafeteria and ignoring all the kids, just heading straight for the kitchens. Then all contact with the school was lost and suddenly there were little toddler zombies crawling out the windows."

"They're not zombies though," Dan frowned.

"That's what a lot of people are calling them," Phil shrugged. "I mean obviously they're alive. There's a whole bunch of words, like 'casualties' is used a lot, as if they just fell down the stairs and we can whisk them off to A&E."

"Okay. So, if it's contagious it's only going to get worse. There are a lot of people in this city, it's going to get a lot worse. So our choices are A: run out now while it's not so bad, grab as much food as we can then barricade ourselves in the flat. I mean it's fairly secure and if they don't know we're in here so we'll probably be alright… but if it does get worse we'd literally be living in a zombie town until we ran out of food. Water and electricity and stuff will probably go too, actually. So that doesn't sound a lot of fun.

"Plan B is to try and get out of the city. We don't have a car and I'm pretty sure taxis won't be running, so we'd be vulnerable. We'd need like weapons and stuff. Proper zombie apocalypse style. And yeah, I haven't thought up a plan C yet. Maybe team up with people and kill all the zombies?"

Phil blanched. "Yeah, like we'd be so good at that. This isn't a video game, Dan. Don't be stupid. We'd be dead within the day – we don't actually own any flamethrowers."

Dan laughed, but the sound was weak. "Okay. I guess it's try to escape then?"

Phil's face was pale, but he nodded. "Let's pack some bags. I should have listened to you this morning, we might have been able to get on a train or something."

"It's not your fault, I was really panicked. We would have got halfway there then I would have calmed down and told you that you were an idiot for listening to me and then turned us back around." Dan's lip wobbled and he was trembling slightly, and suddenly Phil pulled him into a hug.

* * *

x

* * *

They were whipped into a frenzy packing their backpacks while simultaneously hovering slowly in each room, reluctant to finish, for then they would have to leave. Night was drawing in and there had already been two blackouts. They had packed and repacked their bags three times now, and finally Phil put his foot down.

"Come on Dan, the longer we leave it the more dangerous it's going to be. Let's just go. Make sure everything's turned off in case we ever get to come back here."

"That's quite serious talk," Dan said nervously. "This isn't a video game – this is like modern day. They'll bring in the army dudes from America or something and sort it all out. Blow up some stuff. Then the insurance claims will start coming in. It'll all be over in no time, it's not the end of the world, Phil."

"Yeah, you're right." Phil said, but neither of them believed it – because they had both heard the announcement on the radio, right before the power went out.

_Breaking news: reports of a similar infection are coming in from Beijing, Munich and California. We are unable to make any contact with Washington DC._

They had tried to call their parents, extended family and friends multiple times throughout the evening, but the few times the line had connected there had been no answer.

* * *

x

* * *

They left the flat in darkness, the cupboards bare and the windows locked fast. Outside it was eerily silent. They had lived in London a long time and had become accustomed to the roar and buzz of the city, but now not even a rat rustled in the gutter. The air was still. Paranoia pulled them close together, glancing over their shoulders every few steps and jumping at small noises. Dan gripped the hilt of their meat cleaver while Phil held tight to the comforting solidness of a metal pole they had pulled from a pile of rubbish. They had knives too, as many as they could carry, but Dan hoped they wouldn't get close enough to One Of Them to have to use them. If it was as contagious as the reports had suggested, it would be far too late by then.

Out on the high street they were comforted by the sight of several small groups of people making their way along the empty road. A Family of four jumped as they came out of their side street, brandishing a collection of crowbars and cricket bats and demanding in hushed voices to see their eyes. They fell in step with the family, the two groups walking carefully separated from one another, both wary of each other while comforted by the swell in numbers. The youngest child was a boy of three or four who kept threatening to break down into frightened tears, his mother picking him up periodically to try to soothe him.

A group of ten walked in front of them. They were all heavily armed with bats and planks of wood, but they also carried a variety of slingshots and one even had a blowtorch canister slung over her back. As they watched, a Diseased jumped down from a rooftop, landing spitting a few feet in front of the group. The two leaders dropped the ground instantly and the row of three behind them stepped forwards and launched a volley of small objects and ball bearings at It, causing it to reel backwards in shock, covering it's face and losing its balance. As soon as its guard was down, the huge man at the back of the group stepped forwards, swinging what looked like half a street-sign pole at It and knocking it into the pavement. Two smaller figures stepped forwards neatly, one dousing the creature in petrol from a small jerry can while the other struck a match and tossed it down onto the ground. Once they were satisfied little of the creature remained, they moved on, leaving the last embers of the blackened corpse to die.

Quickly, Dan and Phil's small party started forwards again, more determined than ever to stay close to this group of apparent disposal experts.

* * *

An hour passed, but the tension did not ease. And then Dan's heart stopped.

The group in front of them had spotted something down a side street that made them break into a dead sprint. Without stopping to think both Dan and Phil followed suit, legs racing and hearts pounding in their chests. As they passed the street Dan's head turned involuntarily to look. It was a horde. There was no other way to describe it. At least a hundred of Them hurtling up the alley. If his arms hadn't been pumping wildly at his sides, Dan would have reached out to grip Phil's hand.

The horde had been chasing a large group of school students, and Dan could only listen to their screams as they rounded the corner and joined the main street just behind him. He could hear Them too. They snarled as they ran. The family they'd been walking with were already falling behind, carrying their small children. The students too sounded as if they'd been running a long time. A wild thought sprung into Dan's mind with a spark of hope as his throat burned. Maybe the school kids would keep Them busy long enough for Dan and Phil to get away.

They skidded round the corner and stopped dead in their tracks. A row of jeeps and heavy cars were halted in a row across the street.

"Get Down!"

Dan fell to the floor, Phil at his side.

A tall man crouched atop the middle jeep, a heavy metal rifle on one shoulder.

"Ready..."

In the dark it was hard to make out, but Dan could see at least twenty more guns aimed out into the dark street. Dan and Phil began to wriggle on their bellies towards the line of cars, not keen to be caught up in the violence. As they reached the wall they were grasped roughly by their jackets and pulled behind the barricade. A girl no older than sixteen pushed them out of the way as she re-aimed her gun. Cautiously, they turned to watch.

The family of four were first to round the corner, darting to the sides of the road as they spotted the rows of glistening black metal. The school students came next, the fastest several hundred metres in front of the rest. They kept running, splitting in two and making for the gaps in the barricade at either end.

The next group of students turned into the street, gasping for breath, eyes lighting up with relief and brimming with tears as they saw the row of cars. As they approached the barrier the gunmen screamed at them.

"Show us your eyes!

"YOUR EYES! Show us your eyes or we'll shoot!"

Screams drowned their voices. The fastest of Them were at the students' heels. Some wore ruined suits and Dan wasn't sure he could tell who was human and who was Not any more. Gunfire ripped through the night, round after round pushing back at Them and suddenly all the headlights glared into life. They fell back for only a moment, screaming and snarling into the gunfire.

"We need to see your eyes!"

"Help me, oh god, help me!"

"They're coming!"

"Check the eyes before you shoot!"

The soldiers sprayed bullets into the wall of oncoming figures. Dan watched a few hit the pavement. Blood splattered. The horde flattened those that had fallen. Closer now. A stone's throw away.  
A tall figure fumbled to clip another case of ammo onto his gun while he yelled. "SHOOT! IGNORE THE EYES JUST SHOOT THEM ALL!"

"Too many!"

"I can't see their -"

"No, get back, that one's got yellow eyes! Shoot it! It's through, someone grab it quick!"

"Help me!"

"It's got me-"

"What happened to the fucking plan?!"

"It's so cold."

"Help-"

"Please, don't shoot!"

"STOP SHOOTING-

"Back on your station!"

"He's got blue eyes HIS EYES ARE BLUE! Someone help him quick,"

"Grab him!"

"Cover me-"

"JASON, NO!"

"Aim for the big ones!"

"No, don't – he's climbing the wall!"

"YELLOW!"

"Please-"

"Kill them all, it's too late. Kill them all. KILL THEM ALL."

Machine gun fire ripped through the night till only silence remained.

_Fire's in eyes  
And this chaos, it defies imagination._

* * *

x

* * *

"Seventeen… eighteen… nineteen…"

The morning sky was a weak and watery blue. Sunlight sparkled off the crimson street, where blood pooled between paving slabs and ran down into the gutters. The teenagers with guns had given up telling people that they weren't actually soldiers. Just a group of friends that lived above an artillery shop. Phil hadn't realised how young they were. Only the owner of the shop, a large, heavily tattooed man named Carl, was any older than Dan. The sunlight had woken them from a fitful slumber and now Dan and Phil sat on a window ledge, watching the girl who had pulled them to safety slowly circling the mound of ruined bodies.

Carl had been in charge the night before. It was he who had given the final order to fire at will, and it was he who'd spent most of the morning sat dejectedly on the pavement with his head in his hands.

"Twenty-seven, twenty-eight… twenty-nine…"

He looked up as he heard the girl's voice. "Katie? What are you doing sweetheart?"

She jumped at the sound of his voice, but stared steadily into his eyes. "Their eyes are closed and I don't wanna get close enough to check, but now it's light you can see who has blue lips and who hasn't. I'm counting the ones who don't. The ones that we killed that weren't diseased."

"Katie…"

"It wasn't just you shouting orders last night, you know. It was chaos. Everyone was yelling and screaming and begging and dying. Michael gave the same order you did, to kill everyone on the other side of the barrier, only he gave it long before you did. Everyone was panicking so they just did what he said. Don't blame yourself, Carl, most of these people are here because of Michael."

"Don't blame Mikey either," Carl said, alarmed. "He did what he thought was right – they were getting over the barricade on his side. We'd all be dead if we'd stopped to make sure every single person we were shooting at was One Of Them."

"And, because we didn't, there are thirty innocent high school students lying dead on the road amongst the zombies."

"They're not zombies."

"Those thirty certainly weren't."

"Katie…"

A boy cut out their view suddenly, staring down at them.

"You two," he barked. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two and twenty-six."

"Ever fired a gun?"

"No…"

"Can you drive?"

"I can," Dan said.

"Thank fuck. These kids are even younger than us. Really not what we needed. I don't suppose either of you are doctors?"

"Sorry,"

"Dammit. Okay, we're going to get you driving the ambulance jeep. It's a van really, just with all the people who got shot in it. We're moving out in about forty minutes. Come with us if you want to live."

Dan nodded. "Thanks. I think we will. Where are you going?"

"There are ways out of the city that are still clear, the best one is the first one that got blocked and abandoned. They've set up a stronghold there and they're clearing it, but I think a lot of people are planning to make a go of it in the stronghold. Probably as safe as anywhere, and being near the city means you'll have all the resources you need. Anyway, that's where we're headed – then people who want to leave can split. The thing is, the Disease is everywhere. Is it better to be in the middle of a forest? Maybe, there's not so many people around at least to kill you, but there's also no chance of ever living a normal life. They say they've managed to get a generator going in the stronghold. And if anyone ever works on a cure or a vaccination or something, it'll be there. Or somewhere similar. Anyway, that's my opinion. Obviously you guys do whatever you want but that's where we're going. Good luck, try not to die."

_Trouble will surround you  
Start taking some control._

They travelled slowly, the majority on foot, stopping at every shop or open home they came to so as to search for food or any useful supplies. On the second day they added a party of thirty-eight to their group. Workers from a supermarket, still in uniform but with the sense to grab everything they could carry when the news hit. It seemed very few people had opted to follow the advice issued by the government. Most of the buildings they passed lay abandoned and ransacked.

The Diseased had started travelling in groups, whether for tactical advantage or from some sort of herding instinct no one was quite sure, but as their numbers swelled so did the threat they posed. On their third day they encountered a female, alone, her long hair dead and falling from her pale scalp in chunks. The front guard of the party hadn't shot her straight away because they were too busy staring at the sling around her neck, and the tiny, amber eyed baby that stared out at them over cotton swathing.

"What do we do?" A tall, fair haired boy asked Carl.

Carl bit his lip. "See if we can get her to turn around. Obviously if she attacks we have to shoot, but she's not doing anything right now. Just that creepy breathing thing they all do. Fuck. This would be so much easier if they were zombies or aliens or something, but we don't know anything about this disease. What if it's easily curable? What if it'll go away after a while, like a cold? We don't know and we'll never know because we keep killing them all. Fuck, throw stuff at her and hope she leaves. Let's just get to the bloody stronghold."

The Diseased didn't seem to notice the cans and chunks of rubble bouncing off her torso, until a bottle cap hit the baby and it started bawling shrilly. Her eyes burned orange and she leapt forwards snarling, her arms tight around the baby, her teeth bared and grinding. Jake, the boy at the head of the column of marchers, aimed his gun – but his arms were trembling. The baby was still wailing when the gunshot rang out down the empty street and silence fell suddenly.

Carl slotted his gun back in his holster and walked forwards to clap a hand on Jakes shoulder.

"You're too young to be living with that. I haven't got as long left to have to live with it. Let's move on. Burn the corpse."

* * *

x

* * *

Another horde attacked in the early hours of the morning. They weren't prepared. They panicked. Some tried to run.

Their numbers halved.

* * *

Three elderly women were picked up. They moved slowly, but there wasn't enough room in any of the vans. They slowed down the column of marchers. Every day the numbers of Diseased grew. On the fourth day of travel, the three women went missing.

* * *

Burnt out shells of a hundred cars lay in a pile at the outskirts of the city. The group stopped to stare. There was no sign of what had happened, or how they had got there, but corpses large and small littered the surrounding ground. None were Diseased.

* * *

Fifty scared travellers swarmed from a camp of mobile homes and joined the group. Some were not happy about the new arrivals, scared perhaps that there would be too many and they would be turned away from the stronghold. Carl spoke several times, telling those who had misgivings to leave in peace, but no one left. Twenty-one guns were better than none.

The closer they got to the bridge stronghold, the more people they saw making the slow pilgrimage to sanctuary. Two or three hundred now, at least, coming from all directions and converging on the high-walled structure. The bridge was narrow, and going was slow as they merged together and filtered into one, thin line.

This was the moment the horde chose to strike, seven hundred strong.

A collective scream flew up to blend in assonant harmony, wailing and crying and yelling as those at the back ploughed forwards and those on the bridge clung desperately to the metal cables so as not to end up in the water. Dan could only watch in horror as two twin girls were trampled in front of him.

_Two less to get past._

Dan shook his head violently, clinging to Phil's arm as they used their long limbs to push forwards against the mass of people making for the open doors. They were lucky. They were near the front, and there were enough people behind them to protect them from the horde, for now at least. The closer they drew to the stronghold, the more they began to panic. The gates were trying to close. Men balanced on the walls heaved heavy levers, their eyes wide as they shouted at one another.

Finally Dan and Phil were across the bridge, joining the throng of people running through the doors. The men on the gates had panic in their eyes. Dan couldn't hear them over the screams, but he could see their mouths moving.

_Too many_

_Close the gates_

_There are more coming!_

_HEAVE!_

_We'll have to shoot them too!_

Jostling bodies pushed and shoved at Dan and Phil, desperately pressing forwards and pushing against the gates that strained and creaked to close. The heat from a hundred panicked animals charging blindly forwards made the world swim in front of Dan's eyes and he fought to stay upright, clinging onto Phil's jacket. If he fell now, he knew no one would stop to help him up.

The gates were heavy and black, thick wrought iron, and now they were behind him. Relief flooded over Dan and he nearly collapsed once more but the crowd carried him forwards. Inside, there were crude structures thrown together with corrugated iron and heavy chunks of concrete or wood. A water pump stood at the centre of the courtyard. A hundred faces turned to follow the panting, yelling crowd that swarmed through the doors. A small girl dropped her water bottle and an elderly man crossed himself silently. A hundred faces stopped to stare with fear in their eyes.

_You've arrived at panic station._


End file.
